Schema formalism for the common model of cognition

Most authors in this volume focus on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). We propose BICA a rebours, an AI inspired take on human cognitive architecture. Both strategies share the BICA method – a spectrum approach between animal cognitive architecture and AI. We focus on the BICA-Mary argument [1], which is a response to the classical ‘knowledge argument’ posed by Jackson, [2]. Philosophers tend to think that phenomenal qualia cannot be learned by description; this is supposed to show non-reductive character of consciousness. But when we look at it with a bioengineering eye, all this argument demonstrates is the lack of an inborn connection from qualities of experience to conceptual knowledge. This is due to the specificity of human cognitive architecture (originating from evolutionary history) and not due to some deep epistemological truth. The connections from symbols to qualitative experience could be bioengineered in animal brains, which would deflate the example. This is one way to demonstrate that the example has no bearing on non-reductive consciousness. More broadly, arguments that follow the BICA a rebours structure, and view human cognition as an engineering system, help us reexamine misconceptions about human psychology, epistemology and related domains.

A general theoretical framework for designing cognitive architectures: Hybrid and meta-level architectures for BICA

A world survey of artificial brain projects, Part II: Biologically inspired cognitive architectures

Preface: A Forum at the Dawn of the Era of Biologically Inspired Intelligent Machines

The conference on “ Biologically Inspired Cognitive – Architectures (BICA) 2012” was held in Palermo, Italy from October 31 to November 2. It has been the third annual meeting of the BICA Society and the fifth annual BICA meeting. (Chella et al. 2012) The series of BICA conferences started in 2008 under the umbrella of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). In 2010, the BICA Society was incorporated as a nonprofit organization – a scientific society with headquarters in the United States, with the mission of promoting and facilitating the transdisciplinary study of BICA (Samsonovich et al. 2010, Samsonovich 2012).a aSee also the BICA website http://bicasociety.org/

Goal reasoning as a general form of metacognition in BICA

New powerful approach in cognitive modeling and intelligent agent design, known as biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA), allows us to create in the near future general-purpose, real-life computational equivalents of the human mind, that can be used for a broad variety of practical applications. As a first step toward this goal, state-of-the-art BICA need to be extended to enable advanced (meta-)cognitive capabilities, including social and emotional intelligence, human-like episodic memory, imagery, self-awareness, teleological capabilities, to name just a few. Recent extensions of mainstream cognitive architectures claim having many of these features. Yet, their implementation remains limited, compared to the human mind. This work analyzes limitations of existing extensions of popular cognitive architectures, identifies specific challenges, and outlines an approach that allows achieving a “critical mass” of a human-level learner.

VideoPanels are recurrent multipoint videoseminars, originated as a virtual extension of the International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). These professional online working sessions include panel discussions and presentations of research papers accepted for BICA Society publication venues. The overarching goal of discussions on VideoPanels is to develop a roadmap to solving the BICA Challenge: the challenge to create a computational equivalent of the human mind using BICA as an approach. Topics of the first VideoPanels included: (i) the BICA Challenge, (ii) system-theoretic and evolutionary approaches to the study of BICA; and (iii) metacognition. This work provides a brief review of these sessions and analyzes their experience.

The Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures Society, or the BICA Society, is a recently formed nonprofit organization. The purpose of the Society is to promote and facilitate the transdisciplinary study of biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA), in particular, aiming at the emergence of a unifying, generally accepted framework for the design, characterization and implementation of human-level cognitive architectures. The First International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA 2010) is at the same time officially the First Annual Meeting of the BICA Society.

Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence aimed at creating machines that emulate human cognitive abilities. What distinguish BICA from other AI approaches is that it based on principles drawn from biology and neuroscience. There is a widespread conviction that nature has a solution for almost all problems we are faced with today. We have only to pick up the solution and replicate it in our design. However, Nature does not easily give up her secrets. Especially, when it is about human brain deciphering. For that reason, large Brain Research Initiatives have been launched around the world. They will provide us with knowledge about brain workflow activity in neuron assemblies and their interconnections. But what is being “flown” (conveyed) via the interconnections the research programme does not disclose. It is implied that what flows in the interconnections is information. But what is information? – that remains undefined. Having in mind BICA’s interest in the matters, the paper will try to clarify the issues.

Development of a self sustaining cognitive architecture

Permanent magnetic materials

A new challenge is proposed for future intelligent artifacts based on biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA), called the BICA Challenge. Namely, it is proposed that a BICA agent can only be considered human-level intelligent if it can be accepted and trusted as an equal member (a “person”) by a human community. For example, an agent of this sort would be able to win a political election against human candidates.

The challenge of creating AGI is better understood in the context of recent studies of biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA). While the solution is still far away, promising ideas can be derived from biological inspirations. The notions of a chain reaction, its critical mass and scaling laws prove to be helpful in understanding the conditions for a self-sustained bootstrapped cognitive growth of artifacts. Empirical identification of the critical mass of intelligence is possible using the BICA framework and scalability criteria.

Biologically inspired cognitive architectures are complex systems where different modules of cognition interact in order to reach the global goals of the system in a changing environment. Engineering and modeling this kind of systems is a hard task due to the lack of techniques for developing and implementing features like learning, knowledge, experience, memory, adaptivity in an inter-modular fashion. We propose a new concept of intelligent agent as abstraction for developing biologically cognitive architectures.